Onyx
by OneManParade
Summary: Clarissa Fray is eighteen years old and she is trying to solve the mystery of her mother's death. (She's not a shadow hunter in a shadow hunting world). Rated T (for now): because it's from the P.O.V. of a teen, but things could get raunchy later, just letting you know.


A vase descend. For a moment, everything around me slows as the china vase prepares to meet its doom on hard wood floors. Original, hardwood floors. _Why am I such a klutz?_ I wait to hear the characteristic shattering of glass as I tuck a strand of impossibly frizzy, impossibly red hair behind my ear. _Crash._

I wrinkle my nose and flinch away from the end table, hoping that maybe no one noticed a short girl knock over a prop in this victorian style house. But, everyone hushes and looks at me. As if it wasn't obvious enough that I don't belong here before. I smile, and drop to my knees, picking up the pieces of what looks like a vintage china vase and six delicate lavender roses. They reek of death. At least, the rose scent is now what I'll always associate with death, since my mother died.

A pair of ivory white hands pass in front of mine and begin to help. Steadily they claim all the tinier pieces as I observe a singular lavender rose bud. I want to smell it; to be reminded of my mother in anyway that I can, even if it means reliving her funeral. I draw the bud to my nose.

"It was an heirloom." The hands speak, or rather, the owner of the hands speaks. I look up from the rose in my hand to find a man sitting before me, with white blonde hair the wisps around his face and a pair of onyx eyes that see right through me. I can feel my pulse quicken, my palms grow wet. I don't know why. His high cheekbones and pouting lips make him model worthy, but those eyes… I can't tell if what I'm feeling is fatal attraction or the fight or flight response.

"What?" I'm not sure where I find my voice, but I give myself a mental pat on the back as I begin to stand, holding the large pieces of the broken vase in one hand and a single, thornless lavender rose in the other.

"The vase, miss. It was an heirloom." _Miss_, the strangest title anyone could give me. I'd be just as fine with no title at all, especially from him. Miss sounds disconcerting.

"I'm," I want to apologize, but the words fall short on my tongue. "I can pay for it." I offer. At least I _sound_ mature. "Really, it's the least I could do." The man simply shakes his head.

"I really don't want your parents' money, unless they're interested in the house, Miss." I really don't want to be called miss, but what can you do?

"Considering that I'm the prospective buyer, you have nothing to worry about, Sir." I hope being called sir annoys him as much as miss annoys me. "How much do I owe you for the vase?" I see him grit his teeth behind his lips. I got under his skin.

"It was invaluable. It cannot be bought or replaced." He looks around the room. And so do I. I walk over to a dark stained table and set the vase fragments on it. I hear footsteps above me. The tour must have continued while I was lost in embarrassment and shame. Now, I'll have to guess on some of the stuff when I take my own tour, alone. _Great._ I look at the rose still in my hand and bring it to my face.

"Who does that anyway?" I let my thoughts out of my mouth, because I figure the dark eyed man has gone to tend to whatever it is that needs tending to in a house like this._ Probably pipes_. Something else I really need a guide for.

"Does what, Miss?" I jump. The proximity of the voice that responds to me is so close that I can feel his breath on my head. Unfortunately for the vase, what's left of it anyway, my start brings my hand to the table where it knocks into the largest salvaged piece. It crashes to the floor. _Wonderful._

"Knock a vase over twice." I mutter, attempting to kneel again to get the shattered china. Dark eyes stops me with a light touch to the shoulder.

"Do you mean to tell me you knew you'd do it a second time. Miss?" His tone is strangely serious. I shake my head, no.

"I was going to ask 'Who sets out family heirlooms when they're hosting an open house?'" Dark eyes relaxed and looks around the room, which is a drab maroon color with dark furnishings to match. And so much velvet material.

"Everything here is an heirloom; sentimental, if you will." He pauses and looks back to me. "That is why I must be rid of it." I nod as I think of my own home back in New York. I could never go back.

"I know what you mean." Perhaps he hears empathy in voice, or something familiar. A certain weight in my words that I'm not conscious of, because the stone cold chill radiating from his eyes ceases for a moment as we share something that I cannot sense, yet I know it's there. Moment drags on, as often moments do and I find myself lost in a pair of warm, onyx eyes.

"What do you call yourself, Miss?" I blink, not even sure of how I got in this position by a small dining room table staring up into impossibly dark eyes and not leaving an inch for personal space. _Were we this close a moment ago? _I don't remember moving.

"Clarissa." I don't want to give him my name, but the word slips out before I can stop it. And it happens twice. "Clarissa Fray." I watch a pair of onyx eyes widen.

"Do you, Clarissa-" The way he says my name sends shivers up my spine. "know of a Jocelyn Fray by chance?" My heart leaps.

"She's" I lick my lips and take a step back, searching the floor for something to distract myself with. "She was my mother." I want to ask him a million things about how he knows who she is. I mean was. But instead, I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and glance at the door. "I don't think this house is a right fit for me." I walk away quickly, before I lose my cool. He didn't kill her. He didn't kill her. _He wouldn't have asked about her if he was the one who killed her. Her,_ my mom who's life was spent halfway in this world and halfway somewhere else. My mom who had no social life, therefore had no enemies. My mom who was strangled to death while I went to a poetry reading three years ago. I whirl on my heels, tears stinging my eyes.

"How did you know her?" I ask no one, because when I blink the tears away, I realize that dark eyes has disappeared. It's been two years since I looked at my mom's old file; since I lost all my friends frantically searching for her killer, since I plotted to get my revenge. Maybe it's time I took the thing out again, just to be sure I didn't overlook anything.


End file.
